Vaut le detour?

Everything happens for a reason, they say. 

I'm beginning to wonder whether all the multiple problems and difficulties I'm experiencing in my attempt to buy a house in France might be the universe's way of telling me I'm making a dreadful mistake. 

I thought I wanted to be here. I love it here. I thought I would be calm here, and centred. I thought I would be able to relax, write, be myself. 

But now I think perhaps this is not my place. I will have to rely on other people to help me - all the time.  I will be a drain on their time and a drag on their goodwill. I'll just be getting in the way of other people's lives. I don't have anything useful to contribute. All the skills and competences I have developed are pointless here, they will be of no value or use to me, and of no interest to anyone else. I will be an outsider.  I will be an interloper. I will be a laughing stock. 

I was brimful of ideas about the house, the garden, the things I might do here. But it turns out these are all wrong. There are all sorts of sensible reasons why they won't work out - and it just makes me realise I will be out of my depth and making a mess of everything. 

At least in the UK I seem to be able to muddle through the car-crash of my life, pulling it off most of the time with a reasonable amount of dignity and sometimes even with panache.  Here I will be a novice at everything. I might be able to appreciate the finer points of French poetry but I don't even know how to ask for my cheque book in the bank or explain my own mortgage. 

I think perhaps I am too old to make a fresh start. What is the point? It's not as if there's anything to head towards, any meaningful milestones along the way.  

I thought that a place in France would help me improve my writing: but I don't seem to have anything to say. 

Absence

When you were ill in hospital, you said you didn't want any visitors. You said you would be home soon, getting ready to re-book the holiday in Cuba that you missed. You were healthier than the rest of us, with your badminton and your pilates, your diet of fruit and veg, your breezy walks with the dogs every day.  

You had a great life. You travelled the world, trekked in the heat of the Sahara, the cold of Everest base camp and all the spaces between. You loved animals and the beauty of nature. You played CDs in the office that ranged from the Stones to Amy Winehouse to birdsong. 

But if I had known I wasn't going to see you again - ever again  -  I'd have visited you anyway. Just for two minutes. Just to thank you for everything you did in the 15 years you worked for me. Thank you for all your hard work, your loyalty and discretion, your tact and diplomacy. Thank you for helping me to build my business while I was raising my family: I couldn't have juggled like that without you behind me every step of the journey to pick up the things that slipped through my fingers. 

You were probably the only person who really understood the full picture that makes up the crazy mess of my life. I can't believe you're not going to be here any more. I wouldn't have made it through these last few years without your hugs, your calm words of wisdom, your confidence in me. 

I hope wherever you are now, there is birdsong and sunshine, mountains to climb, dogs to walk, cats to stroke and some great music on the radio. Rest in peace, you lovely lady. You will always be missed.

Pandoratory

Repel Boarders

“You need to try and work out”, she said, “why you feel so uncomfortable about expressing your emotions”.  It’s the boxes again. I don’t like leakage; I don’t like stuff coming out.  Everything has to stay inside, where it’s supposed to be. All sealed in, watertight. The kitten in the submarine.

I wonder, though, whether the reason I don’t like leakage is not because I don’t want things to come out – but because it’s a sign that the surface has been broken, the defences have been breached, the structure is not watertight. If something can get out, that might mean something can get in.

It’s a Donald Trump-style Mexican border. It’s the Berlin Wall. It’s the 13 foot high welcome we’re extending to refugees at Calais.

Interesting images that sprung to mind there.  I’m not sure the writing part of my brain likes the idea of defences.  Perhaps they are not a good thing. 

Who’s that Trip Trapping Across My Bridge?

I have a vivid memory of my childhood Ladybird book The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  All these fairy tales have been changed now, watered down and sanitised. Red Riding Hood’s 21^st century wolf does not kill grandma, she hides under the bed. And the woodcutter, sans axe, chases him away – probably to a wolf sanctuary.  But in my early Sixties story, the troll ate the billy goats, and then when he was asleep, the littlest billy goat cut open his stomach, the goats jumped out. They filled the troll with stones and stitched him back up. Then when he woke up and paddled in the river, he sank to the bottom and drowned horribly. This was all illustrated in finely-executed water colours.

Which takes me directly to Virginia Woolf – because this is how our fascinating brains work.  She longed for a room of her own and financial independence, so she could write. She was an amazing writer, but she had an unhappy ending, walking into a river with her pockets full of stones.

When I choke down emotions, it feels like swallowing stones.  It’s a physical sensation I’m talking about, not a metaphor. I feel them stuck under my breastbone and sometimes I have so many stones sitting there that I can’t swallow anything else at all. Food gets that far and then I have to sick it back like a colicky baby.  Life can be too hard to stomach, sometimes. 

Better Out Than In?

I was talking to a friend of mine about my inability to express my emotions. He’s a sensible person and he’s known me a long time.  “You have to make a choice,“  he said. “You can get these things out – or you can learn to live with them inside you. If you’re keeping them in, you’ll have to accept them, make them a part of you”.

I instinctively didn’t like the sound of this.  I knew he was right – and I felt that the idea of keeping these things inside, incorporating them permanently, would not be good. So the quest continues. How to get it out? Maybe it will be like lancing a boil. Squeezing a spot. Vomiting cherry stones like the Witches of Eastwick. 

You’ve got to wonder what’s in there, the metaphors that come to mind.  Doesn’t sound like anything good, does it?  (Not too depressed to slip in a photo of Susan... there is still hope for me).

Disorderly

When my sister was a social worker, she had a client who could not let go of any part of his body. He kept his toenail clippings in jars. He kept all the cotton buds he used to clean his ears. He had jam jars of bogies and scabs.  I wondered what happened when he went to the toilet, or when he was sick, or when he got his hair cut. Turns out he never got his hair cut. I don’t know about the other stuff.

There is a man called Richard Gibson in Lafayette who has kept all his nail clipping in a jar since 1978. There is a photo in the Huffington Post. It’s vile.

I expect there is a name for this, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a recognised disorder. Holding on to stuff can seem very, very wrong. 

Everybody Hurts

So another teenager in our little Smallville circle has taken an overdose.

She decided the first thing to do after she’d taken the tablets was to text my daughter (yes, the one who did this herself a couple of years ago) and say goodbye. Daughter, in huge distress, rushes round to her house. Teenager is hysterical and explains to daughter what she has done.  Daughter calls an ambulance, teenager is rushed to hospital. Daughter has gone home distraught. I am rushing home from the city to see what I can do to console daughter.

I can’t tell her everything will be ok, because maybe this time it won’t be. The teenager in question is very troubled and has tried this a few times before.  Even if it’s a calculated gamble that she’ll pull through, I imagine that repeatedly putting your system, your kidneys, your liver through this poison and its equally toxic antidote, must weaken it over time – so your calculation might be few points wrong, and then… flatline.

As a parent, I’ve done the frantic dash to the hospital. I’ve sat and waited for the bloods to come back every half an hour to see whether she’s going to make it (paracetamol has a progressive effect so you can feel ok at first, but it’s doing irreparable damage to your liver, and so no-one knows at first whether the antidote is too little to late).  I’ve sat through the night in the adolescent psych ward and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been.

So I was pretty surprised that in all of this, the teenager’s mum has found the time to track down my number and ring me to complain about my daughter interfering in their private family concerns.

I explained that she felt she had no choice. She was told about the overdose and she immediately dialled 999 because time is of the essence.  She knows this from bitter experience. She loves her friend, perhaps she has saved her life.  The fact that the parents were downstairs in the house watching TV and the teenager did not talk to them but contacted my daughter instead is not our fault.

What is the world coming to? So much pain and so much anger everywhere. 

Impending

Oh shit - it's coming. I can feel it coming. I can feel it in my bones.  

This morning when I woke up, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes. I had to run an all-day workshop for a client so this was not supposed to happen.  

I made it to the workshop (of course). I ran the workshop and it went really well (of course).  But I can feel it massing up behind me.

There are things I should do to stave it off. I should be downstairs right now pedalling it out on the bike. I should be out for a walk, a run, a swim. But already I can't.  I have seen friends, as many as I can - but my stress is at the house, in the place that should be home.  
A house stops being a home when any one of these things happens:

• You come home to find your husband fucking your friend in the house
• Your work is based at your house so work-people come in and out all the time with their own keys
• Your work is based at your house so when it's time to go home, your work is still there, blinking reproachfully in the office
• Your work is based at your house, so when it's time to go to work, your housework is still there, the Cyclops eye of the washing machine staring balefully at you over the piles of laundry
• You have already decided to sell the house so it's on the market and looks like a showhome with all signs of actual inhabitants removed
• You have already decided to get divorced and have allocated each piece of furniture in a horrible game of His'n'Hers

Since all of these things have happened in the house, it doesn't feel much like a safe haven. 

I was looking forward to getting a new house. 

Happy Anniversary

There wasn't anything much to celebrate about today. He forgot. But then again he always did anyway, so that was nothing new. 

I went for lunch with my daughter, I went out for tea with my friends. The sun shone - and I tried not to think about the fact that no-one wants to buy our house (or any house) at the moment because of the Brexit and so we are still glued-together in a situation that goes from benign indifference to thinly-veiled resentment to shouting and crying. Actually I'm the only one who cries, even though I think overall it's the right thing. 

So why am I crying? I cry for the wasted opportunity. We had such a great life. We had everything going for us. We had fun together, we had a lovely family. A lot of effort went into making that possible.  And therein lies the problem. 

Our fundamental disagreement is that he thinks I let him down - at home, in the business, in bed. Basically I drove him into the arms of other women. Few women are likely to be able to provide the full 5* service offering that I did, but hey good luck with that one mate. Strangely enough I disagree with his view of the situation. 

So on we trudge, still shackled unwillingly together. I am now facing the prospect that all the plans I made will come unstuck and I'll be back to square one. I am really struggling with this. I see a cloudbank of despair on the horizon and I am doing everything I can to outrun it.  Let's hope the wind will change. 

Limbering Up

Well folks, this is it. 

After all the angst, the drama, the arguments, the tears - I am finally calling time on this toxic, hurtful, heartbreaking relationship. I don't see that there is anything more I can do, anything else I can try. 

We have sketched out a financial deal. I have filed a divorce petition ("separation for 2 years") and he has signed the paper. The lovely house we restored together and made into our home is on the market.  I have made an offer on a new house - in a different part of town, thought that would be best. 

My Big Birthday passed without a big trip or a big celebration - drinks with friends, some nice meals out. He bought me a scented candle. I think you could divorce someone just for that.  I'm buying myself a house in France. No excuse not to follow my own dreams now, right? 

The Big Plan had been to wait until Thing 1 and Thing 2 were safely off to college but in the end I just couldn't hold out another two years.  We have just come back from our last family holiday all together (went OK actually, only one major argument). 

Sometimes I feel excited about what the future will hold. Sometimes I'm apprehensive. This is mainly because we plan to carry on working together and I'm not sure how that will pan out. It's also partly on account of the Brexit, the economic situation and what will happen in the business. 

One thing I have learned is that whatever I am feeling, writing always helps. So here I am, back on the page, strolling around at the jumping-off point. Another thing I'm learning is that there isn't one-big jump-off. It's a series of small mundane actions. There ought to be something that's like a wedding or a funeral, an occasion to mark the finish. Maybe I'll have to invent one.